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Centennial College will build a new aerospace campus at the old Downsview air force base with $44.2 million from the federal and Ontario governments, better linking students with the industry.

“We’re trying to break down the barriers,” Premier Kathleen Wynne said Monday in announcing the funding with federal Science Minister Kirsty Duncan.

Ontario taxpayers are providing $25‎.8 million toward the $72 million project slated to open in 2019, with the federal government ponying up $18.4 million and Centennial College and other donors making up the remaining $28 million.

The campus will include the historic de Havilland building — where 1,000 lightweight two-engine Mosquito bombers were made during the Second World War.

“You could say this is hallowed ground,” said Centennial president Ann Buller, who added the campus at Downsview Park just east of Keele and Sheppard will help “good jobs flourish in a part‎ of the city that needs them.”

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The location will help Centennial’s aerospace program, now operating in cramped quarters in Scarborough, strengthen already close ties with aircraft manufacturer Bombardier, Buller told about 100 students, educators and aerospace industry members gathered in a restaurant on the old air force base closed in 1996.

The college will triple the number of students in its aerospace program with the new quarters, said Duncan.

That will boost the country’s and the province’s reputation for being part of the “knowledge” economy, added Wynne, who will tout the project on a trade mission to Asia later this month.

“If we’re going to punch above our weight, we have to innovate,” the premier said after a tour of the site in the unexpected blast of winter weather.

The campus was hailed as a “first step” toward ‎the creation of a better “hub” of aerospace activity in the area by Andrew Petrou, executive director of the Downsview Aerospace Innovation and Research consortium of educational institutions and companies.

The group estimates such a hub can lead to the creation of 14,400 jobs and $2.3 billion in economic activity over the next 20 years.

“The opportunity that Downsview provides for companies, colleges, and universities to work together in close proximity on aerospace education, research and product development cannot be overstated,” said David Zingg, a professor at the University of Toronto Institute of Aerospace Studies.

It is a partner in the Downsview aerospace consortium along with Centennial, York and Ryerson Universities, and eight companies including Pratt and Whitney Canada, Honeywell and Bombardier Aerospace.

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